


Lost my mind

by charcoalscenes



Series: Backdated Publications [7]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Disguise, Inspired by Art, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Pining, Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-10
Updated: 2012-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:01:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29639202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charcoalscenes/pseuds/charcoalscenes
Summary: Astral, the fake statue from space, makes the emotional mistake of feeling too attached to his subject, and it hurts.(Posted to AO3 on February 2021 with a Backdated Publication date from when it posted to Tumblr.)
Relationships: Astral/Tsukumo Yuuma
Series: Backdated Publications [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2170983
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Lost my mind

**Author's Note:**

> Actual publication into AO3 is on February 2021. This is an old piece I shared on Tumblr and wanted to post using this site's Backdate feature. More older fics will likely be added onto the Backdated Publications series, so for anyone interested in this piece or in checking out the others, enjoy!
> 
> Edit: Oh, I forgot to add that this piece in particular is inspired by the storytelling choreography of these two videos (less than two minutes each) performed by members of the band EXO, if you want to check them out: [part 1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Oh5dWdzyq4), [part 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDDwIOdJF3A).

Down the stairs from the attic, _pat pat stomp_. Yuma’s footsteps are the loudest in the house, the loudest Astral has yet heard- not because Yuma is heavy, though Astral wouldn’t know, but because each step Yuma takes sounds like Yuma is, for a brief moment, making that spot his home, putting a piece of himself in everything he does - even shuffling from room to room, on the day he carried the souvenirs and boxes and trinkets that his parents had gathered from their journeys and adventures into the attic. 

Yuma had lifted Astral weeks ago from one of the spare rooms in the house that was filled with other statues, some as large as a refrigerator and others as small as a stool. Astral was taken into the attic, where many of the more colorful, interesting, polished items have been kept. “Woah,” Yuma had breathed onto the surface of Astral’s disguise as his thin, hard arms wrapped themselves around Astral’s hips, carrying him. “You’re a lot lighter than you look. Hey, grandma, where did this statue come from? Do you remember?” 

“Ah, Kazuma told me he found that fellow in a tomb somewhere,” Haru had smiled at them, petting Astral’s hard, molded hair in fondness. “He wondered if this one acted as a guardian for the dead. Heaven knows why he decided to bring it home!” 

Yuma placed him near the stairs of the attic, back facing the entrance. The boy had stared at the statue’s face and then positioned it so that Astral faced the far wall, where the window was, and since then, Astral has seen, every day, the sun rise and set and the colors that the sky makes at the times in between. Conveniently, he faced the old-fashioned television as well. 

Astral kept himself still and inanimate as Yuma brushed off what little dust Astral had let accumulate on him for the sake of the façade- on his shoulders, his raised forearms that extended from elbows he kept to his sides, the open palms, the closed crossed legs and smooth curves. He chanced a peek at Yuma when the boy wasn’t looking. Yuma smiled. 

“This one is definitely prettier than the other creepy statues we’ve kept.” He grinned, standing up straight from cleaning off Astral’s lower half and stretching. “Dad should have shown you off to me before. That guy! Only showing me the scary-looking ones with the sharp teeth…”

Yuma’s mindless grumbling faded as he climbed down the steps, no doubt leaving to bring more luggage up there so that the spare room would be more livable. Astral remained still, looking out the window, and realized that he’d nearly forgotten how pretty he found the Earth’s sky to be. 

.

Most days, Yuma treks directly to the attic after coming from school. He stomps up the steps or whoops when climbing up the rope. The jackets and sweaters and vests and belts that he removes at entering are nearly ripped rather than stripped off in Yuma’s carelessness, the belt clicking loudly as Yuma sometimes hangs it on one of Astral’s open arms. He dusts Astral off again, as though in appreciation for holding his belongings, and lays his vest on Astral’s other arm too. 

Perhaps because there was no touching from his own world (everything could be felt there, but there was no _touch_ , not like Kazuma had described or how Yuma had held him or how he smooths his palms on Astral’s surface), Astral has allowed more dirt and dust to stay on him. Yuma brushes his hands, warmer with recent activity, over where he sees the dust. He blows too, at the specks, and Astral feels the air from Yuma’s mouth hit him, hot and cold at the same time, and watches Yuma’s lips and cheeks shape into circles in small and inconspicuous glimpses. It tingles, and it’s pleasant.

Most days, Yuma will turn on the television but won’t watch, needing only white noise for his time studying. Astral watches, but sometimes the advertisements or the dramas or the broadcasts are just static to his ears too, because he’ll watch Yuma instead– who spends a grand total of twelve minutes looking over the D-Pad containing his notes from school before nudging it to the edge of the large chest he uses for a desk. He fishes through his bag for his cards, splays them out, and sometimes asks the cardboard, again, “How did you guys even get here?” 

Hope and Leviathan remain silent, of course, and Astral watches Yuma scratch the hair on the back of his neck, perplexed. Kazuma had spoken highly of his son, and so the direct and clumsy way Astral had found was Yuma’s way of solving problems seemed disappointing and dense at first. But after weeks of watching Yuma chase after Shark to get him back to school, or confronting Todoroki for fraud before befriending him, or chasing down the house robot to a crime scene to duel her into terminating some illegal programming, even something as foolish as the rhetoric act of Yuma asking his cards where they come from is something Astral learns to appreciate. 

Yuma grimaces at the lack of reply, and he shakes off his confusion with a stretch, leaning away from his cards and arching his back, his shirt lifting over his stomach, and his hands reaching over his head– and Astral has grown to like a lot of other things about Yuma, too. 

.

Astral knows he can describe Yuma’s vest as lime despite its color, because that’s the scent of the body wash he uses. Astral knows he can say that Yuma’s belt is fitting, that it helps the hem of his pants to hold his waist so that Yuma’s hips are hugged with the smoothed white material. 

But Astral has never smelled a lime, never bathed in soap, never worn tight pants, and so, for him, Yuma’s vest only feels and smells of Yuma, so that if Astral ever had a reason to or ever gained enough courage to, breaking from the still lie he’s been living in and reaching out and actually touching Yuma would be like grasping and gripping and fondling with the clothes Yuma leaves on Astral’s arms while he’s not there. The clasp that Yuma wears on his waist has touched him, and so, however indirectly, Astral can touch where he’s seen on television others touch those they care for the most. 

He only stared at the clothes in his arms, the first time- had rubbed his fingers over the parts that were hard (the buttons) and the parts that were smooth (the interior), had studied them and mumbled, “Hello, Yuma.” Nice to meet you.

.

In the Key, Kazuma’s description of his family hadn’t been said with words so much as it was shown in the way he’d melted and smiled at saying their names, or the way his eyes would be still and soft and far away even in the midst of the novelty of Astral World when he’d remember them. Kazuma would huff a laugh, “You would have liked Yuma,” and at seeing Kazuma so warm, Astral believed him. 

Astral hadn’t admitted it and wasn’t sure if Kazuma knew, but at finally finding a way into this world, more than using the Numbers or coming back to rescue Kazuma, what Astral had looked forward to the most after leaving was meeting the boy who had the ability to melt hearts.

.

Yuma switches the attic’s light off and yawns after he packs his belongings. He leaves with a bag of pajamas on his back and a sleeping bag tucked under his arm, and passes by Astral with his hands full and leaves the fake statue with the red vest and belt that he usually prefers.

Astral thinks that Yuma will come back for them, so he stays still, but time passes so that he finally relents when moonlight starts to stream through the window. He puts his arms down, holding onto the clothes so that they won’t fall, and lets the blue light of his skin show so that the room is illuminated even more.

He’s able to turn the television on, and some nights he sits in front of it, one hand hugging his knees close to him and the other holding up Yuma’s vest by its collar beside him like a puppet, and for a moment, it will be him and Yuma watching Robin together.

Other nights, he goes by the chest Yuma plays and reads on and sits by the cushions Yuma has put there, and Astral lays the vest and belt next to him, so that in those times, he and Yuma sit together. "Your attacks are still clumsy when you duel, but you’re becoming better,“ he’d say to Yuma, whose red vest curls over the edge of the chest with its collar on the surface; Yuma is resting his head, tired and grumbling. 

"Kazuma loves you so much,” Astral might say instead, laying where Yuma’s head would be on his lap and stroking the slick clothing. "Don’t be sad.“

But, "He told me not to let you see me,” is what he admits in times when he can’t stand to pretend anymore, when the sweater is just a sweater Astral has laid beside his feet- and the belt is discard too, so Astral makes no effort to curve his arm around a made circumstance that should be Yuma’s hips. He mumbles _to_ Yuma, he thinks, but his voice is too quiet for him to believe his own lie, and he alone hears the words, reminding, “Because meeting with me directly is too dangerous. Because eye-contact alone might do to you what it’s done to him, and breaking your bond with this world would break you, too.”

Talking to a sweater somehow feels worse than having torn himself from his makers and his purpose, which was dignified and necessary, and worse than when he’d listened to Kazuma yearn for Mirai and the others, which was sad but sweet, and worse even than when he’d bear with Ninety-six’s trigger happy war strategies and complaints about the dwindling state of their world’s defense system, which is often hysterical but at least is passionate, too.

Talking to a sweater, Astral thinks, is pitiful, and growing to love Yuma with the care Kazuma had held his picture of Mirai or with the consistency of Cathy’s eyes on Yuma or with the soft way Astral feels himself close his eyes and quirk his lips and ease his back like Shark does when he’s with the boy– everything about the slow, masochistic way he _falls_ is useless, and painful, and not part of the plan.

Astral copies the movements Yuma makes when the boy goes to sleep and lays on his side, next to the vest and the belt and over the cushions Yuma rests on every day, and he moves his hands over Yuma, who’s not there, before pulling Yuma closer. "He loves you so much,“ he says, but after a while, it starts to sound less reassuring, his voice not light anymore but deep with a tongue thick with resentment, because he doesn’t want to follow Kazuma’s rules anymore, though still does. And so, Yuma gets cold, feels like nothing but cotton and leather, smells like lime but the scent fades, and Astral watches from afar as Yuma moves and duels, and returns every night acting like he’s never lived or loved before and never could.

.

Yuma notices slowly. 

Usually, Astral will follow Yuma out, observing humanity through the life of one boy without anyone’s knowing, while overseeing the Numbers’ progress. Sometimes, Astral stays inside, plays with a delusion, and almost gets caught. 

Yuma stops in front of him and frowns. He looks over Astral and then to the chest and sees his sweater sprawled beside it. He shrugs and snatches it, tugging it past his arms and walking away. 

.

Astral will hold his Yuma up by the collar and turn his wrist so that the open vest faces him. “We should discuss your many failing strategies,” he’ll deadpan. Astral will keep Yuma close and tug the side of the sweater so that the edge reaches and grasps his hips. Astral will drape Yuma on the hammock or on the cushions and sandwich him, taking his time petting where the chest goes and where the stomach would be and where the cloth reaches Yuma’s neck. He pauses, knows it’s wrong but hurts himself anyway– presses himself to nothing, closing his eyes so he won’t have to see the absence of a face that should be beneath his.

Yuma - the real, living, breathing, always-warm and always-moving Yuma - pouts and squints his eyes and inches closer to Astral after, for an umpteenth time, he finds his vest somewhere other than where he remembers putting it last. Astral thinks of blinking, of introducing himself, finally - but doesn’t. Yuma is so close now, though, lips puffing and jutting. Suddenly, Astral knows that Yuma would be warm, so warm, there- where all his hot breath and banter comes from; no wonder that’s a part humans want to touch the most. He stays still. 

“Are you alive?” Yuma asks, the same way he asks Hope what made him choose Yuma’s deck, the same way he tried to ask Shark, so bluntly, what made him so sad sometimes. Yuma hardly ever gets answers, and Astral doesn’t break his record. He likes this Yuma, the real Yuma, even more than the one he plays with when no one is looking. This Yuma feels like mundane affection and moves like maybe he wouldn’t mind Astral watching him if he knew. This Yuma has smiles that run down Astral’s back, tricking out the knots and tying Astral’s nerves around his fingers without him even knowing. This Yuma feels best when alive. And this Yuma isn’t his; keeping Kazuma’s son relatively safe is the least he can do while the man remains a prisoner, waiting to be saved. 

“I could have sworn I left this with you,” Yuma pouts and grumbles, folding his clothes on his own arms now before turning to leave, and ludicrously, Astral panics. 

He blinks, his eyes going wide, and he feels his head tip up in a sudden desire to snap, “No!” He loves this Yuma, but wants to keep his Yuma, a fake Yuma- keep the sick and pointless infatuation that’s bloomed into the worst hobby he could have thought to have. If he had to leave his makers, had to lead an army, had to listen to Ninety-six rant about the depravity of other species only to meet one of the noblest creatures he would ever know in a human and fall in an invisible love with that person’s son, then he should at least have a sweater. He should own, at _least_ , the smell of Yuma and lime, the smooth belt that’s starting to damage and wrinkle, the moments spent copying Yuma’s stupid one-sided conversations with cards by having his own with what isn’t even a proper puppet, and the delusion of Yuma wrapping himself around Astral when really all Astral does is cover himself in a fake Yuma and move and shift with mere fabric. 

He doesn’t yell, really, but it’s loud in his head, even when he catches himself in time to stop the objections from escaping his throat. Yuma doesn’t see the movement, already having turned his back to Astral and shuffling obliviously down the stairs, and Astral raises a hand to stop him only to force that action still too. “ _It’s mine_ ,” he doesn’t whine, and he grits his teeth and fist and is silent, “I need to have _something_ . Those who love others need to have _something._ Everyone else can love you, everyone else is safe to love you, but that was mine, I _owned_ those things, **_it’s mine_ **.”

Yuma didn’t leave anything in the attic this time, and so doesn’t come back up. Astral realizes that he’s still glowering at the entrance, at the empty space there, his body free and his skin glaring in its glow, but Yuma doesn’t return and so doesn’t spot Astral and scream. Astral can find Yuma, could always find where Yuma is, but doesn’t now, because the self-mocking thought that ricochets the loudest in Astral’s crowded and noisy mind is how low he has sunk himself that his jaw and eyes and chest shake in such a human-like way for nothing but pieces of cloth.

“Yuma…?” Akari calls from downstairs, her footsteps coming closer, and Astral sulks away, shifting so that his back faces the entrance, his arms are propped uselessly at his sides, and the brightness fades. “Yuma, are you up there?”

Akari climbs up and sighs at not seeing him. She pauses before leaving, and Astral lazily observes the startle she has at seeing him, as though she forgot he was there. He dismisses it and waits for her exit, wanting to break free again even though he isn’t sure what he’d do then. “I don’t remember your face looking so sad?” Akari wonders, suspicious and intuitive as always, but Astral can’t admire her at the moment and is relieved when she finally leaves to look for Yuma somewhere else. 

He’s seen Yuma do it, and Kotori, and even Robin too, and he thought that he knew what it meant, that the reason for the act was small and simple. Astral hears Akari’s words, having been said quietly but repeated in blares in Astral’s ears, and the flood behind his eyes doesn’t feel small, and he wishes that the light Yuma gives off from his smile and his cheer was something as simple as the light in the attic- that Astral could switch it off in the place he’s kept for Yuma in his heart and just leave. And crying the way humans cry, being sad over something small, bringing his palms up to his face and trying to cover the weight of his frown, feels hard. 

.

Astral ends another day by feigning stillness.


End file.
